Contagion: The Biohazard Thriller
The one slightly silly element of an otherwise gripping and credible film is that Soderbergh must find himself a villain and decides, as millions perish, that it should be…a blogger? The scribbler in question (Jude Law) is a failed freelance journalist in San Francisco who is the first to raise the alarm about the virus when he posts video of a man collapsing on a bus. This makes his blogging (which, we are told in a memorable quip, is not writing but “graffiti with punctuation”) a worldwide sensation and he quickly leverages his status to promote a quack cure for the virus that stands to vastly enrich him.
Moreover, as you’d expect from Soderbergh, an out-there liberal who a couple of years ago filmed a loving four-hour homage to Che Guevara, there is a dig against the military, though it’s fairly mild by Hollywood standards. A high-ranking officer (Bryan Cranston) in Washington distracts scientists trying to learn more about the virus by speculating that it might have been created and spread by terrorists. Soderbergh doesn’t dedicate a lot of energy to vilifying him, though.
More surprising is that such a committed liberal as Soderbergh should use the movie to land several hard punches against unions. We’re repeatedly told that during the pandemic the nurses union, the Teamsters, and even the union of funeral-home employees are refusing to do their jobs. It’s not hard to believe that unions would, as they have throughout the financial crisis, consider themselves above sharing in a generalized pain, but one wonders: Where did this animosity come from? In addition to big studio productions like Erin Brockovich and the Ocean’s movies, Soderbergh has also filmed several micro-budget movies in which union costs would have been a major hindrance. If a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, then a union buster, evidently, is an artist who has tried to work around the Teamsters.
I think I’ll watch something a little more “cheerful” on TV, like Titanic. I’m not sure that I really want to spend my free time watching the world collapse because of some disease. But, then again, it’s better than having to watch the Smurfs, or some of the other endless animated 3-D movies or super-hero movies Hollywood keeps cranking out these days. At least this movie is about real people.
Unions contributed to the outsourcing of movie-making to the rest of the country and Eastern Europe. Why pay exorbitant union rates when you can take your production to New Mexico, or Louisiana, or Bulgaria, where there are equally hardworking and talented people willing to work for more reasonable wages?
Unions existed for a reason, but most of the things they worked for are now enshrined in law. Practically the only service they provide now is to squeeze more money out of management, regardless of whether it’s actually there, and to protect a few deadbeats.
I don’t quite see what unions have to do with a movie review. Not everything has to be about politics.
It’s unfortunate unions should be about politics. They should be about the working people.
Then you just haven’t been paying attention. Everything is now about politics. And it always was. Welcome to the real world.
You might not be looking for trouble, but it sure as hell is looking for you.
The recent swine flu scare turned out to be nothing but a hoax cooked up by the MSM, CDC and Big Pharma. Apparently this film is a variation on the same theme. Its aim is to soften up the sheeple in advance for the next contrived pandemic panic. No doubt Big Pharma provided money and “advisers,” just as the Pentagon routinely does for films that favorably portray the military.
The movies message was pro big active government. Out of nowhere a virus can appear, and the only way a vaccine is developed and disbursed is through the government. They shut down civilian labs even though the break through for the vaccine is found there. Groups that take things into their hands lose and it is not a coincidence that the boggier is evil.
Good Lord, how I hated “Traffic.”
The absurd overexposed film to tell us “Gosh, it’s hot in the desert!” The ridiculous lighting effects. It was like having the director actually in the shot at all times reminding us that he’s a director and he’s driecting a film.
Utter crap.